Sexy, smart and with a ferocious new lease of life at 50 – they’re women whose mid-lives are far from a crisis

IT WAS the Oscar-winning Canadian actress Marie Dressler who first isolated it as the zenith of a woman’s life. “By the time we hit 50, we have found out that only a few things are really important. We have learnt to take life seriously but never ourselves.”

As Dressler turned 50 in 1918 she was certainly ahead of her time in celebrating the heady joys of middle age but she had good reason to believe that the birthday could herald a renaissance in a woman’s life: she didn’t appear in a film until she was 42 and at the age of 65 was still Hollywood’s No 1 box office attraction. For her, 50 represented a new lease of life filled with opportunity and fresh challenges.

Back then, of course, she was the exception. For most women – and this was the case until fairly recently – hitting the half-century was the start of a steady decline towards the infirmity of old age.

Emma Thompson, Nigella Lawson, Miranda Richardson and Greta Scacchi

How things have changed. Today a raft of successful, sensual, smart women have marked or are about to celebrate their big 5-0. This year the so-called Quintastics – those born five decades ago – include the actresses Greta Scacchi, Tilda Swinton, Kristin Scott Thomas and Julianne Moore, as well as Domestic Goddess Nigella Lawson and TV presenter Carol Vorderman.

Last year Nastassja Kinski turned 50, so did fellow actress Emma Thompson and singer Sheena Easton. Also blooming in their 50s are singer Madonna and actresses Miranda Richardson, Sharon Stone and Annette Bening, the woman who enticed Warren Beatty to quit his bachelor life.

Today, 50 is not a time for Crimplene, it’s a time for learning to hang-glide

“If you think hitting 40 is liberating, wait until you hit 50,” says actress Michelle Pfeiffer who will be 52 in April. In the run up to her 50th she appeared in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Hairspray with John Travolta, following the four-year career break she took to spend time with her children. Since then she has made films with people as diverse as Kathy Bates and Ashton Kutcher.

Where once the milestone birthday would have meant putting your feet up and letting nature take its course, today it means anything but – and that’s true for normal women too, not just Hollywood screen sirens.

“Today, 50 is not a time for Crimplene, it’s a time for learning to hang-glide,” says Susan Quilliam, a relationships psychologist who is thoroughly enjoying her sixth decade in a new bijou flat in the centre of Cambridge where she says she has learned to party.

“We’re welcoming an era in which 50 is the new 34,” says Emma Soames, editor-at-large of Saga Magazine. “This new 2010 generation can look forward to another 30 years of active life, while the generation born 100 years ago were within a few years of the end of theirs at 50. They don’t feel their age.”

As baby boomers come of age, they have more money, power and freedom than ever before. All of which represents the opportunity for a fresh start.

“What you are seeing now is the first generation of women brought up to believe they can have it all,” says Quilliam, author of The New Joy Of Sex. “Women of 50 are much more empowered than they were.” When Carol Vorderman’s contract at Channel 4’s Countdown wasn’t renewed she responded by creating a string of Sudoku books that sold in their millions and releasing a video game for PlayStation 2. Last year Julianne Moore was nominated for a Golden Globe but also started a career writing children’s books.

The major change taking place is in our attitude to ageing. “In our generation all the messages about women’s validity after 50 have completely changed,” points out Quilliam. “We are now free to do what and say what we want when we want; 50 is no longer the downturn that marks the end of a useful life. Now women work, the benchmark for the endof youthfulness is retirement. These days you can make love when you want to, go out when you like, learn a new skill or enjoy yourself how you please.”

AND so it is that Sharon Stone is winning awards for her gay rights activism; Annette Bening has taken up a seat on the California Arts Council; and im passioned protester Emma Thompson has bought a plot of land on the site of the proposed third runway at Heathrow Airport. “We’ll stop this from happening even if we have to move in and plant vegetables,” she says.

The contraceptive Pill and better health care have both had roles to play in enabling women to view 50 as a new beginning. “No longer does 50 mark the inevitable decline after menopause.

Our grandmothers were exhausted after years of childbearing but with the advent of the Pill, the meno- pause doesn’t have the same cultural significance,” says Quilliam.

The message for today’s fiftysomethings is that it is perfectly possible to reinvent yourself and take on a new challenge.

Kristin Scott Thomas, nominated countless times in the past two years for film acting honours, has recently revitalised her theatre career and will appear on stage in Paris next month. Sheena Easton continues to tour internationally year round but is also rumoured to have become a talented property developer.

And, on top of the three million cook-books that she has already sold, Nigella Lawson has cleverly built up a cookware range worth an estimated £7million. But if there is one star above all others who has made an entire career out of her ability to reinvent herself it is the recently divorced Madonna. She may turn 52 this August but why would that stop her? She will release a new live album in March based on her 2008 sell-out Sticky & Sweet tour which became the highest-grossing tour ever by a solo artist.

Susan Quilliam sums up the modern attitude to age: “Fifty-year- old women know they can party like mad. They have at least another 15 years of working life and it’s just going to get better and better.”